It is important to understand that the belief that there is a moderately distinct form of reasoning we can call "legal reasoning" is in the final analysis an empirical claim. Most people can describe a unicorn, but our ability to describe a unicorn is not inconsistent with the crucial fact that there are no actual unicorns in the world. Similarly, most of us can point to examples of genuine self-sacrificing heroism, but even as we do so we recognize that such behavior is highly unusual. And so the lesson we should draw from these examples is that our ability to describe legal reasoning, and even to point to actual examples of its use, says less than is commonly supposed about how often such reasoning is an important component of what lawyers and judges actually do. To point to one or a few instances of genuine constraint by precedent, for example, says almost nothing about the frequency of such constraint throughout the universe of legal decisions.

Unknown, Frederick Schauer - Thinkin…, loc. 21